CeBIT 2009: Linux Wants to Win Back Netbooks

About a year ago almost every netbook ran on Linux. Now the free platform has disappeared from almost all of them. In an Open Source Forum at CeBIT, Warren Coles of Taiwanese netbook vendor Linpus explained the reasons why.

KOffice Suite

KOffice is a free, integrated office suite for KDE, the K Desktop Environment. KOffice applications use OpenDocument as their native file format when possible. KOffice developers plan to share as much infrastructure as possible between applications to reduce bugs and improve the user experience. They also want to create an OpenDocument library for use in other KDE applications that will allow developers to easily add support for reading and outputting OpenDocument files to their applications. Automating tasks and extending the suite with custom functionality can be done with dbus or with scripting languages like Python, Ruby, and JavaScript. KOffice includes the following components:

KWord

A frame-based word processor that can work in two modes: page oriented or layout oriented.

KSpread

A powerful spreadsheet application with multiple sheet support, templates and more than 100 mathematical formulas.

KPresenter

A full-featured presentation program with image and effect support.

Kexi

An integrated environment for creating databases and database applications, designed as a Microsoft Access or FileMaker competitor. It can be used for designing and implementing databases, inserting and processing data and performing queries. It has limited compatibility with the MS Access file format.